You can't do much plotting and scheming if, every time you open your mouth to tell a lie, you stammer, sweat, turn red and gasp for breath. It's a dead giveaway. Nobody tries it more than once.
One or two men had tried to nullify the gas or work out a local antidote, either as a pure research project or through power-madness. But, because they had had to state their purposes as soon as they thought of them, they were put away. Neat. Very neat.
What I wanted was the formula for the truth gas. Its location wasn't exactly a secret in this land of complete candor, but it wasn't writ large on any wall for all to see, either. They kept it in their capital—located about where our Omaha is—on file among the Vital Statistics.
I took a superjet out there.
had no trouble posing as a historian entitled to the facts. The gas didn't work on me, you see, because it was adjusted to the physiology of that timeline. There was just enough difference between us for it not to make me stick to the truth.
"We'll write out the formula for you," I was told obligingly. "But you'll have to sign the usual statement."
"Of course," I said. "Which one is that?"
"The one that says you won't publish it, and will destroy your copy when it has served your research purpose, without letting anyone else see it."